Taking confident and pro-active action can make a massive difference to your results. It is extremely easy to go day to day, month to month and not get as much done as you had imagined or hoped.
So, let us make the second third of 2018 count by stepping out of our comfort zones and grabbing the bull by the horns. How? Below are a few tips.
Know which bull’s horns to grab
Start with being clear about how you want your practice to be and what you need/want your practice to achieve. Having really clear focus will guide you to the actions you need to take to make the most impact.
“Cat: Where are you going?
Alice: Which way should I go?
Cat: That depends on where you are going.
Alice: I don’t know.
Cat: Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Be pro-active
Often working on the development of the practice is left to the gaps that come about between patients. Set yourself clear times to work on the practice rather than just in it. Assign value to that time so that you are not tempted to slot patients into your allocated business development time.
It might not result in money in the bank in the short-term but the actions you take working on the business will result in long-term benefits. It’s important to recognise this and remember it.
Get support
It’s unlikely that you received a lot of business and management training whilst you were studying to be a therapist. It is also unlikely that you decided that you wanted to become a therapist because you loved the idea of marketing and managing people.
Recognising the level of our strengths and what our areas of development might need to be is really important. We can then identify what we either need to go and get trained up on or find the right person to do those tasks we have no skill in and no interest in learning either. As the saying goes, Jack of all trades and master of none. Stick to what you’re good at and get better at the most important things needed to be done to develop your practice.
As an example, it’s not important that you capture the bookkeeping transactions but it is important that you understand your numbers. A competent bookkeeper’s hourly rate is much less than you make in an hour of treating patients (and if it’s not perhaps you need to consider a price increase!)
Therapists are often trapped in the mindset of external services or additional staff being really expensive and therefore try and do everything themselves (sometimes slowly and /or badly) creating the illusion of saving money. In the long term all it results in is an exhausted, disheartened therapist.
And if you’re wondering where you can get that help get in touch with us now – if Painless Practice can’t help with your particular challenge we can connect you with someone who can.
